Student protesters with the Occupy movement will converge on four UC campuses Monday morning to vent their fury at a meeting of the regents, with demonstrators in Davis attempting a campuswide shutdown.

Stock futures rose Monday after a strong start to the U.S. holiday shopping season. Initial reports show a record number of shoppers hit the mall or bought gifts online during the holiday weekend. That's welcome news with consumer spending accounting for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

Police arrested several people early Monday at the Occupy L.A. demonstration outside City Hall, but then the commotion quickly died down. Shortly after 5 a.m., police issued an order to disperse to those demonstrators gathered at the intersection of 1st and Main streets. Most people complied, but a few demonstrators refused to leave.

Americans bought slightly more new homes in October, a hopeful sign for the troubled housing market. But the median sales price fell to its lowest level of the year, and the overall sales pace is trailing last year's — the worst in half a century.

In a political era in which government is often blamed as a problem rather than a solution, Harvard University's Innovations in American Government Awards hopes to show the converse can be true. And one of its six finalists - out of 563 applicants from around the country - is Healthy San Francisco.

The Raiders are a long way from wrapping up their first division championship since 2002, but they can see what it takes to get there. That much was clear after a 25-20 victory over the Chicago Bears on Sunday at O.co Coliseum, coming as it did against an opponent that reached its conference championship game last season and is the thick of the NFC playoff race.

Druid Heights, a little-known enclave where Zen philosopher Alan Watts, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and prostitutes union founder Margot St. James once lived with other counterculture characters in "shared bohemian poverty," has long been one of Marin County's best-kept historical secrets.